Coming Back

(Return path marked in green.)

Based on my experiences with tricky detours heading up to Balm Beach, I thought that I should just take nice straight routes home, and see how that worked out. So I took Highway 6/27 straight into Barrie, then Concession Road 10 to Bradford, then Yonge Street stright to Finch Station.

As I said in the previous post, there was some craziness on the trip back. The weather prediction was a 40% chance of thunderstorms. I figure those are better odds than you would get at a casino, and I don't really have any other way to get home, so it didn't really affect my planning. I got to Barrie in record time, and figured that if the rest of the trip was that easy, I would have nothing to worry about. After an Iced Capp at Timmy's I made my way onto Concession Road 10, and kept on keeping on. Sure enough, 20 minutes out of Barrie, the skies opened, and a torrential downpour started. For most of it I was reduced to peering out of one mostly-closed eye, seeing only a few tens of feet ahead of me, since the rain was apparently pelting its way through my sunglasses, to hit me in the eyes. I suppose, in retrospect, that that was a good clue to me that I should have pulled over to the side of the road, and waited it out, but at the time, I figured I should just keep on riding, over to the edge more so that cars wouldn't hit me, because who knows how long the rain would last, and I didn't want to be stuck standing there for hours. Well, the rain didn't last that long, but it did manage to completely soak me, and my shoes didn't dry out that night, nor the next. Having said that, the wet shirt and shorts did manage to keep me comfortably cool for the rest of the ride.

South of Barrie, I stopped in Bradford for a rest, gave Amy a call, and went on South down Yonge. It was getting a little hillier, and so I tried to take it a little easier, stopping every now and then. I met a nice kid who was taking the bus to his job at Canada's Wonderland. He was hoping for a thunderstorm, so that he could sit around and do nothing, and still get paid. Heh. He was also quite impressed at my trip so far. Finally, I saw the CN Tower. What a rush that was. I worked out at one point that I could describe my trip as "Go as far north as you can see. Then look north again, and go as far north as you can see. Lather. Rinse. Repeat." I never did manage to keep track of how many times you would have to do that, but it's sort of a neat idea. Maybe next year.